


surface, depth, secrets, kept

by ballad



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Folklore Elements, slow-burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28074768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballad/pseuds/ballad
Summary: In a tributary river in the forest, there lives a little mermaid who delivers letters. Her life gets turned over when she falls in love with a fisherman with a lovely singing voice.
Relationships: A Mermaid/A Fisherman
Comments: 10
Kudos: 65





	surface, depth, secrets, kept

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by tumblr user @liridi's beautiful [art](https://liridi.tumblr.com/post/637240521581101056/mermaid-in-love-with-the-local-fisherman) of a fisherman and mermaid! I hope you like this, my friend.

Mermaids don’t eat anything, you know. We are creatures of magic and song. We dine on music; we feed on lyric. Our voices are beautiful; we know this. A mermaid only dies when she doesn’t feel like singing any longer. When her own voice doesn’t leave her spellbound any more, and her love for her voice fades away. Vanity, you may call it. We call it righteous pride. We call it the will to live.

Here is another thing about mermaids: we have hierarchies. Vain creatures always do, I suppose. The ones with the most beautiful voices reign strong in our choirs, and the plainer, dull-pitched ones like me—the ones who’re still alive, that is—get relegated to mundane tasks. 

No mermaid sings _completely_ awfully. I’m not—not tone deaf, you know. It’s more that I sing like a heron than a nightingale. My voice is blunt; _brassy_ in the words of the kind, _guttural_ in the words of the unkind. I sing very quietly, and only to myself. 

So I deliver letters. You ought to know that i’m the only mer-messenger of this forest tributary river. It spans miles, it does. I carry letters, written in spell-parchment and ink bled from the seeds of water-poppies. We mermaids adapted to the writing systems of land-dwelling folk; we are fluent intheir symbols. We _are_ symbols to them, too; few of them believe in us, but it is most enjoyable to trick them, nonetheless. Ah! Mermaids have terrible character. Everyone knows that.

And me?

My life is busy. My life is lonely. Even so, I would hate for it to change.

But I am observant, the way plain, unlovely beings tend to always be. And if I’ve heard a thousand sweeping epics of land-folk, and a thousand more haunting songs of water-folk, I know what’s common in all of them _is_ change, and change alone. It’s as inevitable as tides, it is.

And now I have had change come to me in the most worrying form of all: there is a man on a modest little beast-boat, and he sails into the river in the forest every morning, catching our silly little fish, and he sings, with both an instrument and his voice, and he sings beautifully. 

And he has seen me listening to his singing, many times, and he has smiled at me, and he has done nothing else to acknowledge me but smile, his kind eyes crinkling at me. There is warmth in his open, honest expression; he clearly sees me as harmless.

I don’t know how to feel about it. I think about him, often, and I never know what I _want_. Do I want him to shoo me away? Scowl at me? Beckon me closer to him? 

All he does is sing on, as though my presence is ordinary.

It stings.

So one day, I try singing back.

It’s in the morning, just the two of us around, the sun-ripples glinting off his boat. He sets out his fishing line, offers me a small smile as he notices me in the water metres away, and then moves to take out his instrument.

I begin singing. I sing one of the songs he sings most; a lullaby meant for children, I believe. I don’t know if he will see it as a taunt or not. I sing quietly, deliberately looking away from him, until I can’t bear it and look back at him, only to find him staring at me with something like— _awe_ , maybe, or startled pleasure.

Perhaps I am imagining it. It surprises me how nervous I am—as though I’m only just realising it. I can feel my fins trembling below the water, where he can’t see.

I lose my courage, and swim away.

* * *

But I return the next day, and he is pleased; even I could not imagine that grin on his face to mean anything else. He calls, politely, across the dappling water, “I am glad to make your acquaintance, Lady Mermaid.”

In my surprise I stutter, and my voice feebly calls back, “A-And I yours.”

After some minutes of silence, passed in him fiddling with his bait and lines and me idly swimming around his boat, he clears his throat— _he’s nervous_ , it finally dawns on me—and says, “My name is Benjamin. Would you be willing to tell me your name?”

Do I have a name? I have never thought about it. I need time to think about it. “I will tell you my name tomorrow… because of water-folk laws. We tell each other our names a day after meeting each other,” I lie.

“Ah,” he says.

There is another pause, more uncomfortable. He seems to be thinking. I realise I might as well ask him something, too. So I ask, schooling my voice into just the right level of casual interest, “Why is the word Hadassah written on your boat?”

I may have asked the wrong question. He intakes a surprised breath, and then—his expression goes distant. Distracted, lost in some memory. “My wife,” he says. “That was her name, when she lived.”

I curse myself. I don’t know what to reply to that. So this fisherman has known grief. The land-folk all know grief, I suppose; it is we mermaids who rarely mourn for each other.

But then, as though noticing my discomfort, he decides to talk of other matters. “Your voice. You sing very well.”

He is lying out of politeness. “Thank you,” I say. And then, on an impulse, “So do you.”

At this, he beams. “A mermaid telling me I sing well? I must be dreaming!”

And then we both laugh, and something warm seems to be bubbling up in my chest. “It is the truth,” I insist.

“Thank you,” he says, and he clearly means it.

I smile at him. 

The next day I swim up to his boat, and tell him my name is _Messenger_. He frowns slightly at this—he has clearly noted my messenger bag and the letters I carry—but lets the subject slide. I am nothing more than a mermaid messenger, after all.

But I think I might be the only mermaid with a human friend. From that day onwards, Benjamin and I talk every day.

* * *

We have been friends for a month. I think he might be my favourite human.

* * *

Three months into our friendship, I realise he might also be my most favourite creature, among mermaids and humans both.

* * *

Winter comes. 

The river freezes over. My skin as a mermaid is thick, and I dwell at the bottom of its dark waters.Benjamin and I had bid farewell to each other on the last day before the ice came. I wonder what he is doing now, wherever he lives.

It is a lonely, boring winter, passed in quietness. I deliver very few letters; most mermaids sleep through the darkness and the cold.

When spring arrives, I swim to our usual meeting place, heart bursting with excitement, and—

—he never arrives.

Weeks pass, and Benjamin does not visit me.

I begin to wonder what I did wrong. Or was it only my ideas of friendship that were wrong, in the first place? Perhaps I was never as precious to him as he was to me.

I still visit the same spot, every day. The other mermaids know by now; they laugh at me, and I ignore them.

* * *

Spring turns to Summer. I have not spoken to him in nearly a year, now.

It’s the hottest day of summer when he finally visits. He is on a different boat, not the one named Hadassah—and he appears to have lost a finger on his left hand to something or the other—but it’s him.

It’s Benjamin.

He smiles at me. A sad smile. I swim closer, and he says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t visit.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

He exhales. “Someone set my boat on fire. It was by some drunken accident, but then nobody reimbursed me for it.”

“Oh,” I say.

He continues, “And my mother, she died of a cold this winter. I— have no children. I am alone in the world. And—it’s funny, I… I only managed to survive this awful winter by thinking about visiting you in the spring.”

“So why didn’t you?” I ask, and both of us hear the upset plain in my voice.

“With my boat burned, new fishermen took over. I couldn’t buy a new one instantly, so I had to get other jobs,” he says, looking at his hands. “I went to the nearest town, and worked in construction. I—I barely ate. I only managed to save enough about a week ago. So… I came back. And brought a boat. Now I’m here, and have a job as the fisherman once more.”

I say, gently, “You could have visited me at the riverbanks, on land.”

He says, quietly, “That would have been embarrassing, I think. I needed a job.”

“It does not matter to me,” I say.

“It does to me,” he says. “I—I know the rumours. About mermaids.”

“What?”

He says, “You can change to people, gain legs, if you choose—but the choice is irreversible.”

“It’s hardly a secret,” I say. I’m unsure where he’s going with this.

He leans further forward, hands against the boat’s sides, his face close enough I can see lines around his eyes, and individual locks of dark hair. “I’m in love with you,” he says.

At my astonished expression, he repeats himself.

“Change into a human,” he says, “And marry me. Please.”

I’m still dumbfounded, barely able to do anything but stare at him, mouth open.

“I know,” he says, “That you are beautiful and wonderful, and far more than a messenger. You and I have each other. We could—be happy together. I only ask that you think about it.”

My heart is beating so fast. What is happening to me? “I—No,” I say, and press my hand to my heart. It’s frantic.

I see the hope in his face fall.

We say nothing, and look away from each other.

“Fine,” he finally says. “I understand. I apologise if I offended you.”

“It’s fine,” I say. 

Conversation dies after that, and soon enough, I swim away.

I am too afraid to look back.

* * *

Too afraid to visit him, the next day, or the next.

* * *

My heart—could it be bleeding? Every motion I take hurts further. I think of him, and ache.

This is what does it for me: one of the other mermaids—she calls to me, deep in the water—“Oh, you. Come here.” Her voice is so beautiful. Any mermaid would recognise her authority.

“I have a name,” I say.

She scoffs. “A name? What name?”

I tell her, “It is none of your business.” 

I swim away before she can slap me.

After that, the mermaids shun me, and ask other mermaids to deliver messages.

* * *

I still have my messenger bag. I take the last spell-parchment I have, and write on it, 

_I’m sorry._

_I feel the same for you._

_Is the offer still open?_

_If not, I understand._

_If it is, my answer is yes._

No elegant words. No lyrical prose. I have never been as good at pretty words as I have at understanding the truth.

And then, on an impulse, I write down one last thing.

_I don’t want to be called Messenger anymore, either._

The next day, I swim to his boat, deep underwater where he cannot see me. His line is twenty steps into the opaque water.

I hook the letter into it.

He notices. He reels the letter up. I suppose he reads it. I wait underneath the boat, in silence. I feel oddly calm, in a fatalistic sort of way. Whatever happens, whatever he says, I have been honest. I have been as unmermaid-like as possible, in choosing honesty.

When I finally summon enough courage to swim up to the surface, to him, he—

—dear god—

— _he jumps off the boat_ , into the water, with an undignified splash, and swims to me. He hugs me, as we both float on the water-surface. It is the first time we have touched like this.

I hug him back tightly. We float, holding onto each other.

When we break apart, I notice I have human legs. My fins appeared to have realised that a decision was made, somewhere in my heart.

He notices too, and laughs. His expression is joyous as he says, “We’ll think of a name for you, together.”

“I would like that,” I reply, and hug him again.

_FIN._

**Author's Note:**

> comments welcome! my tumblr is @sheherazade.


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